Review: Kirby: Triple Deluxe is full of hot air

Kirby has what it takes to be a top-tier Nintendo character, but the Japanese gaming giant still doesn’t seem to want to give him a decent game.

Kirby: Triple Deluxe is a ridiculously easy title. It was so easy in fact, that I actually got tired of playing because the game didn’t give me enough of a challenge to create a fun experience. I sucked, I spewed and absorbed and Triple Deluxe didn’t really get any better.

Triple: Deluxe, however, does do some things really well and features interesting boss battle mechanics and platforming, but besides that, it’s not really a game I’d encourage Kirby fans to pick up.

Cute, but powerful.

I was excited to get my hands on the new Kirby because he’s one of my favorite Nintendo characters and I was looking forward to experiencing all the new features Nintendo added to Kirby’s growing roster of abilities. Unfortunately Kirby: Triple Deluxe is a step in the wrong direction for the cute little hero.

The story revolves around Kirby climbing a giant beanstalk called the Dreamstalk in order to save King Dedede who is kidnapped by a being named Taranza.

Kirby can transform into a lot of things – we know that much – but Nintendo cut back on a lot of his abilities with Triple Deluxe. There’s only a total of 26 in the game but for a title of this caliber, you’d think it would feature more variety. Yes, Kirby has a few new powers like Circus, Beetle, and Archer, but fun favourites from past Kirby titles like Jet, UFO and many others are nowhere to be seen. It gets boring using the same powers over and over again and I wanted to experience levels in different ways, but that unfortunately wasn’t happening.

Kirby also gained a really special ability in Triple Deluxe called the Hypernova. Grown from a special Miracle Fruit, Hypernova gives Kirby incredible inhaling abilities and allows him to literally suck up everything in his path; trees and enemies will disappear into the depths of his gut with ease.

It was interesting to see a new gameplay mechanic, but it almost felt too powerful and became repetitive quickly. It also made the game even easier than it already was.

In every level you can also collect key chains and they usually consist of different bosses, characters or Kirbys from past games. With over 200 normal and 36 rare key chains to collect, it certainly takes a while to uncover them all. I’m currently sitting at an 86% completion rate for the game and I still have 100 key chains to go (I’m not too optimistic about finding the rest since they’re given out randomly).

Kirby’s Hypernova in action. He swallows everything in his path!

The top-notch platforming people have come to expect from a Kirby game can be found in every stage you play through and in the boss battles you encounter in Triple Deluxe. A particularly charming feature in the game allows the player to use warp stars to move in and out of the foreground or background of a level. This feature also creates more hazards as enemies can attack you from any position on the screen. For example, Poppy Bros. Jr can throw bombs at you from the background while you’re in the foreground and vise versa. It doesn’t raise the difficulty level much, but it’s still interesting. The feature is best used when taking advantage of the 3DS’ 3D capabilities, but as usual it wasn’t something I could keep using for an extended period of time without my eyes hurting.

Besides the adventure mode, Triple Deluxe features unlockable game types like Dedede Tour, where you speed run the game as fast as you can by playing as King Dedede and The Arena that pits you against nine bosses in a row (in order to see how far you can get before getting KO’d).

Triple Deluxe is a decent,well-rounded game, but don’t expect anything more than that. Nintendo hasn’t rewritten the script on how Kirby games play with Triple Deluxe and in some ways, the Triple Deluxe is almost a step backwards for the franchise.

It looks good and sounds great but the title is relatively short and Kirby’s lack of abilities makes the experience feel repetitive far too quickly.